


Walls

by daylighthour



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Arthur is hurt, Bath, Battle, Bittersweet, Canon, Caring Merlin, Confession, First Time, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Love, M/M, Magical Creatures, Patrol, Prince Arthur, Slash, canon AU, happy-ish, hurt Arthur, kiss, merlin is guilty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-10
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-11-14 17:14:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18056717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daylighthour/pseuds/daylighthour
Summary: Merlin helps Arthur, who was injured in a fight with the very griffin that almost killed Merlin. Hurt, a lot of comfort, and the explanation of just why a prince would throw himself in harm's way for a lowly manservant.





	Walls

**_But in your beauteous gift, methought I traced_ **   
**_Something above a short-lived predilection,_ **   
**_And which, for that I know no dearer name,_ **   
**_I designate as love, without love’s flame._ **

_-Henry Timrod, "Sonnet: I Thank You"_

Some of the other servants have already lit a fire in Arthur’s chambers, for the room is already blazing with its gentle heat when Merlin and Arthur stumble as one through the doors. The guards close and lock the door immediately after them, and this added privacy, this added assurance that no one but his manservant will see his weakness makes Arthur slump even further, if possible. Merlin stutters under the shift in Arthur’s weight, fighting not to let the injured man whose arm is slung across his shoulder fall down any further.

  
“Come, Arthur,” Merlin coaxes, “we’re almost there.”

  
Merlin eases Arthur down in a chair, and winces when Arthur winces, frowns when Arthur cries out. His concern must show in the knit of his brow, for Arthur snaps, exhausted and breathy.

  
“Get on with it, Merlin.”

  
Merlin nods, feeling unusually subdued and almost chastised, but he accepts the feeling as his punishment for being so carelessly _stupid_ out in the forest and being the reason Arthur had almost died. He turns his back to Arthur and with golden eyes and silent words makes sure the bathwater in the tub beside the chair will still be of perfect temperature by the time he has Arthur undressed.

  
He turns back to Arthur. “Can you raise your arms, sire?”

  
Arthur tries for a moment before his face contorts in pain and he chokes out a barely stifled cry. Immediately, Merlin’s hands are on his shoulders, rubbing up and down his arms.

  
“Shh, it’s alright,” he says soothingly. “Just sit still. I’ll find a way to get all of this off, sire.”

  
Undressing Arthur while keeping him more or less still is hard, but made easier by the fact that he is not wearing his chainmail, Merlin and the knights having ripped it off to tend to his wounds in the forest. Merlin removes his boots, his socks, his trousers, his undergarments, his coat, and his jerkin, but there is no reconciling with the tunic, his last layer. Merlin takes the dagger Arthur always keeps in his boot and slices the tunic down the middle and slips it off him.

  
“There,” Merlin says softly. “All done.” He is expecting a reprimand for speaking to Arthur as though he were a young child until he sees the white lines of pain that pinch Arthur’s face.

  
Merlin looks at the tub of water, so close and yet so far, and realizes Arthur can never make it in there, not in his current state. “I can bathe you here, in the chair, if you like, sire.”

  
Arthur nods, solemnly and shyly.

  
Merlin finds a rag and wets it in the warm bathwater, ringing it out a bit before bringing it to Arthur. He starts first with his face, wiping away dirt and grime and crusted blood from the gash on his brow, noting Arthur’s wince as he ghosts the rag across the purpling at his temple and his cheek.

  
Merlin moves to his neck and his shoulders, and Arthur slumps forward, exhausted from the weight of his bruises and his dizzying brush with death. Merlin scrubs over his shoulders, gently, as though Arthur were a glass relic he could shatter.

  
Then Merlin is at Arthur’s chest, and the injuries that he had tried to hard to ignore while undressing the prince confront him with full force. Merlin moves the rag so lightly along the edges of the gash on Arthur’s chest that the cloth scarcely touches the skin at all, and still Arthur bits his lips against a whimper. The memory of Arthur lying on a bed of rocks, bleeding out beneath Merlin’s very palm no matter how much pressure he applied, rushes back to Merlin’s conscious and it is so assaulting that Merlin has to pause to catch his breath.

  
They had been alone, the two of them, the knights spread out at their stations, and so there was only one thing Merlin could think to do while he held the pale, nearly lifeless form of the man he loved beneath him. He healed him with magic, pushing sweeping golden tendrils into the deep maroon gash until some of the skin and veins and organs knit back together. Just enough so that the wound would not be fatal, but nowhere near a complete healing, for Merlin was shaken and trembling and the knights had heard Arthur’s anguished cries and were running in their direction.

  
But now, Merlin wishes more than anything that he _had_ healed his prince fully, as his fingers trace the rock-shaped bruises at his ribs where the griffin had thrown him down, the myriad of smaller aches and pains that branch out from the almighty gash the way a river gives way to tributaries.

  
Merlin’s chest tightens at the sight, but he too is tired and so he speaks from the heart without meaning to.

  
“Why did you do that, Arthur?” he says, and even to his own ears the sound is too much like a sob. “I was stupid, rustling around in the trees and making noise right in front of the griffin. You were safe where you were, Arthur.” Merlin traces a particularly vivid bruise at Arthur’s shoulder, and they both wince. “Now look at you.”

  
For a moment they are both silent, and Merlin knows that the same scene is playing in each of their heads: Arthur, throwing himself in front of his manservant and in the path of a charging griffin. The griffin, slashing Arthur aside with one massive claw. Then Arthur speaks, the sound cracked and hoarse, but with the ghost of an attempt at his usual humour and levity.

  
“I had to protect you, Merlin. It's too much trouble to find another manservant.”

  
Merlin does his best to join in the farce as well. “Careful, Arthur. People might start thinking you actually _care_.”

  
Arthur sighs, the sound carrying the bone-deep weariness of an entire kingdom, and now his voice seems far off, at the end of a vast tunnel. “I do.”

  
The rag, scrubbing at Arthur’s legs, pauses. “What?”

  
“I care about you, Merlin, more than I care about myself.” Arthur draws in a breath, shutting his eyes, as if steeling himself for battle. But his voice is tired. “Everything I say about you, that you're a coward, you're useless, all of that, I don't mean it. And when I saw the griffin descending on me I realized what a horrible thing it would be to die without having told you how I truly feel.”

  
Though the water had been warm, Arthur is shivering now, and so Merlin gets a towel to dry the dampness from Arthur’s skin. Arthur tries to shift position a bit, barely choking back a sob, and for that and for the world of pain in his posture and the fear and vulnerability that had clouded his eyes as he spoke, Merlin wishes he could just _tell_ Arthur the truth, tell him that he had magic and that Arthur never had to worry about protecting him because his magic was stronger than any sword Arthur could ever wield.

  
Merlin is drying Arthur’s chest, gently blotting away the moisture, when a warm hand covers his, trapping the towel in place. Arthur’s hand, calloused from years of holding a sword, trembles slightly from exhaustion but remains where it is, in such a way that is not accidental. When he still does not let go, Merlin looks up to find Arthur already watching him, silent and intent. Neither of them look away, and Merlin worries for a breathless moment that he is reading something of his own desires into the vast blueness of Arthur’s eyes as his own heartbeat speeds up in his chest.

  
Then their lips meet, and it is solid, calm, chaste bliss for what could be seconds or what could be eternity. Merlin can't say who broke it first but then as soon as it had come they are breaking away, and it is only then, with the absence of Arthur’s chewed and chapped lips on his that Merlin fully grasps what had just happened. His skin buzzes with it.

  
Arthur is looking at him, a thousand emotions written in his eyes, and Merlin can think to do naught else but reach out for him.His fingers come to rest lightly on the curve of his prince’s jaw.

  
“Arthur?” he says, but Arthur shakes his head slightly, the stubble of his cheek rubbing against Merlin’s palm.

  
“No more tonight,” he said lowly, a laugh catching in his throat. “I'll be sore enough as it is tomorrow.”

  
Merlin is so shocked, so unsure that he or Arthur or the both of them aren’t just delirious with fatigue, that any words he could think to say catch in the back of his throat. His hand drops from Arthur’s face.

  
When Merlin says nothing, Arthur speaks again. “Have I misread you?” he asks, and the worry and embarrassment and self-consciousness in his voice are weighed down heavily by exhaustion, so much so that that is all Merlin can notice: the cloudy glaze to his eyes, the way he is too tired to even try to move away and go rigid and tense his jaw as he always does when his emotions slip his control.

  
Finally, now, Merlin can speak, and the words tumble like rainfall from his lips. “No, Arthur, no,” he says, and both of his hands are caressing Arthur now, cupping his cheeks and ever so keenly aware of the cuts and bruises upon them. He presses his lips to Arthur’s forehead. “A thousand times, no. I just thought… I always thought I was too hopeful, that it could never be true, that I was projecting my feelings onto you…”

  
“Daft as usual, Merlin.” Arthur’s voice is sleepy, sedate with relief, and he is melting even further into the chair, eyes drooping shut. Merlin gathers him gently into his arms, supporting him as he has done all day, Arthur’s arm around his shoulders.

  
“Come,” he murmurs, “let’s get you to bed before you keel over right here.”

  
They stumble the short distance from the chair to the prince’s bed, and Merlin lays Arthur down tenderly, cupping his head and placing it gently on the pillow, covering his bare legs carefully with furs and blankets. Merlin considers getting a salve to rub on the bruises and gash and cuts, but he fears reawakening the pain when the prince seems this close to sleep.

  
“In a week,” Arthur mumbles almost drunkenly as Merlin adjusts the coverlets around him, fluffs the pillows, “you can have your way with me.”

  
Merlin can’t help but laugh and smooth the blonde fringe from Arthur’s forehead. “When you’re healed, Arthur, yes,” he says, chuckling, before he takes on a sober tone, thinking on the gash. “But that might take more than a week."

  
“Two then,” Arthur huffs out, his eyes shut. For a quiet moment he lies there, still, before his eyes crack open, bright and blue and focused and almost scared.

  
“Just… lay with me tonight?”

  
Warmth curls around Merlin’s heart. “Of course, Arthur.”

  
As Merlin toes off his shoes and sheds his coat, Arthur shifts up to allow Merlin more room to get in the bed and cries out as the movement pulls at his injuries. In an instant Merlin is beside him, bending over him, shushing him. It takes a moment of rubbing Arthur’s arm for Merlin to realize he doesn’t have to stop himself anymore, and so he plants a kiss behind Arthur’s ear and settles in beside him. Arthur makes a small, contented noise.

  
“Get some sleep,” Merlin whispers in his ear, carefully wrapping his arm around Arthur’s chest and pressing himself up against Arthur’s back. Arthur’s hand finds his and holds it. Merlin’s heart soars.

  
And because it had been such a night with secrets revealed and walls cast down and because Merlin is perhaps a little giddy on the memory of the kiss that he suddenly can’t _bare_ the thought of living a lie anymore. How can he lie next to Arthur, holding him so close that he could feel the beating of Arthur’s heart echo through his own chest, and continue a life of falsity? How could he admit one secret and yet still hold another?

  
Heart pounding in his ears, Merlin leans so close that his lips brush the edge of the prince’s ear, “I have magic, Arthur.”

  
His heart skips and his limbs feel cold, but Arthur is already fast asleep. 


End file.
